Trademarking Quinn Popcorn

We need to federally trademark our logo and company name. For those of you unfamiliar with this, trademarks are a type of intellectual property. They protect brand names, slogans, and logos, and can be any word, letter, number, design etc. We are not required to trademark our logo or name, but there are advantages in doing so.

We will receive ownership of the mark we trademark, we will have ownership of this mark nationwide, and we also receive the exclusive right to use this mark with any products we sell along with it. These reasons are important because we want strong brand identity associated with Quinn Popcorn. Our logo and name will be the face of our product. When a consumer buys are product, they are buying into our brand; they associate Quinn Popcorn and our logo with a quality product and most importantly, at first glance, it distinguishes our popcorn company from the other, competing microwave popcorn companies out there.

When we trademark our logo and name, we need to make sure it’s not likely to cause confusion with other registered marks. Currently, I don’t think this will be a problem… but I am not entirely sure. When we submit our application, there is no guarantee that we will get it registered, but I will let you know what happens!

Before I fill out the papers I am supposed to do the following.

– Watch and review the instructional videos

(I cheated and instead of watching the video I read the document.)

– Perform Search

(You can search your mark in the USPTO database for possible conflicting company names, logos etc. Nothing came up, but doesn’t mean we are out of the red yet.)

– Hire an attorney if we would like.

(That’s funny… we obviously can’t do that until we have funding.)

– Start filling out the application.

It’s 16 pages, so Coulter is definitely going to have to help me with this one. I admit that I sometimes need help decoding legal mumbo jumbo.

– Submit and pay our $275 dollar non refundable fee.

So we need to make sure we have everything correctly lined up.

This process is as fun as it sounds…but it could be interesting?! The United States Patent and Trademark Office has a somewhat user friendly website, and we start there. If you are interested, click here. (http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/process/index.jsp)

interesting fact: If you see a TM after a mark, it indicates that the company is going to register for a federal trademark but hasn’t officially done so. Or they claim rights to that trademark. However, they won’t have the legal protection that a registered federal trademark will provide them with. (I didn’t know that, and thought it was interesting.)